Celtic Colours assembles artists from all directions

Cheticamp guitarist Maxim Cormier performs at Celtic Colours in Cape Breton. The artist will play at Fortress of Louisbourg for Sunday's popular Step Into the Past concert at 6 p.m., and at the Alexander Graham Bell Museum on Monday evening at 7:30 p.m. (CONTRIBUTED)

Every year the organizers of the Celtic Colours International Festival cast a wide net across Canada and around the world to bring the finest international talent to Cape Breton to share the stage with the island’s own gifted artists.

And some of those visitors, such as this year’s returning performers like Scottish accordionist Phil Cunningham or Irish flautist Nuala Kennedy, come to consider Cape Breton a home away from home.

Kathleen Ivaluarjuk Merritt will be making her first appearance at Celtic Colours. (Contributed)

Celtic Colours newcomer Kathleen Ivaluarjuk Merritt, appearing at Friday's grand opening concert at Sydney's Centre 200, already knows that feeling. The Nunavut throat singer, who performs under the artist name IVA, grew up on the northwestern shore of Hudson Bay but feels a close connection to the island through her Sydney-born father.

“I was telling my friends I was so excited to share the stage with Heather Rankin, because we were a family that came from Rankin Inlet,” says Merritt, just off a flight from Nunavut Music Week in Iqualuit. “Our family friends used to joke that we were the original Rankin Family when we came to Cape Breton.

“I remember thinking that was so cool, and now I’m excited to see her perform and play on the same stage as her.”

John Doyle, John McCusker & Michael McGoldrick will perform at Centre 200. (CONTRIBUTED)

She also performs on Saturday night at the Wagmatcook Culture and Heritage Centre at 7:30 p.m., Thanksgiving Monday at Eskasoni's Sarah Denny Cultural Centre at 2 p.m., and gives a workshop on Tuesday at Baddeck’s Alexander Graham Bell Museum at 1 p.m.

Joined by multi-instrumentalist Chris Coleman, who produced her album Ivalurajuk: Ice, Lines & Sealskin, and Charlotte Qamaniq from the Juno-nominated trio Silla + Rise, IVA bridges her dual heritage in song. The rhythmic, cyclical pulse of her throat singing blends wonderfully with the uplifting swing of guitar, fiddle and accordion.

While she already had a foot in both worlds thanks to family summer vacations in Cape Breton, Merritt’s desire to perform took root while taking part in a student program for Inuit youth in Ottawa. There she learned about the contrast between life in the north and in the south, and the changes brought to her community by colonization over the course of a few generations.

“I became very proud of where I came from, and proud to be a throat singer,” she says. “When I first learned throat singing I didn’t speak Inuktitut, so that became my way of connecting to home and my way of connecting to my culture.

“So I fell in love with throat singing and I started singing with every throat singer that I met. Every Inuk woman that I met, I’d ask if they did throat singing so we could sing together.”

While cherishing childhood Cape Breton memories of driving in the family van listening to the Rankin Family and Rita MacNeil, picking blueberries and swimming in the Atlantic, Merritt calls her first visit to Cape Breton as an adult “a very healing experience.”

Reconnecting to her father's Irish-Canadian family reinforced her ties to both the open expression of throat singing and Celtic folk at the same time that she was developing her repertoire.

“I knew I was going to record a project, and I knew I wanted it to come from a place of security and a place of home, where I am who I am as a person, and I knew that's what I wanted the record to sound like.”

Also making his Celtic Colours debut at Saturday’s We Walk As One grand opening concert, Glasgow fiddler John McCusker felt a kinship with Cape Breton before he ever set foot on the island. The former Battlefield Band member included the tune Rosin the Bow learned from a Howie MacDonald CD on his solo debut when he was still a teenager, and first visited Cape Breton when he taught at the Ceilidh Trail School of Celtic Music in Inverness in 1996, alongside Natalie MacMaster and Dave MacIsaac.

“I stayed there for a week, and it was a real eye-opener for me,” says McCusker during a break from moving house with his wife, Scottish singer Heidi Talbot. “But at the same time it was so familiar, because I’d spent so much time in the Highlands of Scotland, so it reminded me of that old school hospitality.

“There were ceilidhs in people’s houses while they made sandwiches and cups of tea. You couldn’t eat enough sandwiches or have enough cups of tea, and there were people playing music in the kitchen. I remember so much about it with great fondness; there was something really exciting about it . . . like stepping back in time in the best possible sense. It was like living in the heart of the music, and the joy people got from just creating music for fun in the house has stayed with me 20 years later.”

Now McCusker is overjoyed to be returning, with longtime friend Michael McGoldrick on flutes and pipes and past Celtic Colours guest guitarist John Doyle. The Wishing Tree, their first studio recording as a trio, debuts this fall, but they’ve been playing together for over a decade, since they were brought together for BBC Radio's Transatlantic Sessions.

This weekend they also perform on Saturday night at the Savoy Theatre in Glace Bay and on Sunday night at the Whycocomagh Gathering on the shore of Lake Bras d’Or, a further extension of the “couple more gigs” they said they’d play together when the Transatlantic Sessions tour ended 10 years ago.

“We’ve toured a lot, we’re great friends, and we try to keep it as fresh as we can,” explains McCusker, who says they’re at the point where heavy rehearsal is not a necessity, even when they’ve been off working with other artists.

“We always try to have that element of excitement and energy about the shows and making music together. Not too over-polished; it’s not just a jam session either, but we want to give off the right kind of energy that I think a lot of that comes from playing music by the seat of your pants, when you’re not sure what’s going to happen next.”

There’s also an ingrained instinct in place when Cheticamp guitarist Maxim Cormier plays with his father, Gervais Cormier. They’ve been playing together since Maxim first stepped onto a stage 14 years ago, and this year’s Celtic Colours marks the start of the launch period for their new album Maxim & Gervais Cormier: Cape Breton Guitar.

“It’s great to be able to play together, for sure,” says Maxim. “When we’re preparing for a show or a recording there are a lot of decisions that we don’t even really have to discuss; everything just falls into place. I think it has to do with growing up in the same house and listening to the music they listened to.

“Musically, our backgrounds are very similar, and we gravitate toward the same things in terms of what we like or don’t like, in this style of traditional music. It’s unlike any group I’ve ever been in where there definitely has to be more discussion, while here it all comes together naturally.”

Thanks to Celtic Colours, Dalhousie-trained Maxim has had the opportunity to take his guitar skills — including the classical chops he displays on his recent Plays J.S. Bach CD — from Scotland to Australia as a performer and instructor. This weekend, he and Gervais perform at Fortress of Louisbourg for Sunday’s popular Step Into the Past concert at 6 p.m., and at the Alexander Graham Bell Museum on Monday evening at 7:30 p.m. There’s also an afternoon session at Nyanza’s Big Spruce Brewing Co. on Tuesday at 2 p.m.

As it is for most Cape Breton folk players, Celtic Colours is a big red circle on the calendar for the Cormiers, but the event also had an important role to play in Maxim's growth as an artist when he received its Big Sampy Award in 2012, which helped fund the production of his debut album.

“(Celtic Colours) has been a way for the music I’ve been working on to be heard by people who are in that scene. It might have taken a couple of extra years for that to happen,” says Maxim.

“There have been so many opportunities to share the stage with musicians from all over the world and meet the delegates who come to Cape Breton every year. It’s been a big help for sure.”